Shock, Rage Over School Shooting Yield To Dull Anger

For Heartbroken Jonesboro, The Answer Is: `There Is No Answer'

April 19, 1998|By RICK BRAGG The New York Times

JONESBORO, Ark. _ — The white ribbons, symbolic of the city's grief, are beginning to fray. It has been almost a month since the schoolyard killings of four girls and a teacher, apparently by an 11-year-old boy and his 13-year-old buddy, and the shock and rage have given way to dull anger, a nagging, heartbreaking puzzlement.

The why of it, the explanation for the worst thing that has happened here, evades Jonesboro even as the new spring grass creeps across five fresh graves.

People speak about moving on, but until there is an answer they wait, bogged down in their own uncertainty, like the farm machinery that sits idle in muddy fields around this city, waiting for clearer, warmer skies.

``If you had asked me to list the names of any student who might have done something like this, I don't know if I could list the name of one child,'' said Lynette Thetford, who taught sixth-grade social studies at Westside Middle School.

She was shot in the schoolyard ambush on March 24 and is at home now, recovering.

There has been new information, and wild opinions, but no explanation, and many of the excuses offered for the killings seem to defy common sense, said people who were touched by the killings or just deeply troubled by them.

In Craighead County, Ark., that includes just about everybody.

The 13-year-old, Mitchell Johnson, had been sexually abused, said one of the boy's lawyers, declining to give specific information about where and when.

The boy lied about being in a gang, apparently because he felt shunned by some of his peers.

He talked about killing his ex-girlfriend because she had broken up with him.

But not every boy who is abused or is not popular or is jilted becomes a cold-blooded killer, people here point out.

As for Andrew Golden, 11, his history and character change from that of saint to demented child, depending on who is asked.

He played trumpet in the school band and once bottle-fed a lamb. His grandfather said he was a fine marksman, and neighbors said he liked to wear a skinning knife strapped to his leg when he rode his bike.

But guns and knives are almost playthings here for boys his age, no more ominous than other toys.

Beyond vague references to getting even with people who had been mean to him, he seemed to have no motive.

``I never even paddled him,'' said Thetford, who taught Andrew.

The answer is that there is no answer, at least none that makes sense, for why two boys, apparently angry at things boys get angry about, somehow made the leap from bombast about avenging petty disagreements with classmates to murder.

The inability of people to fully grasp what happened here is apparent in Thetford's description of the minutes leading up to the shootings.

Heather Pate, a sixth-grader, had left class to go to the bathroom and saw a boy dressed in camouflage pull the fire alarm. She returned to find Thetford readying the class to walk outside, in an orderly fashion.

``Ms. Thetford, it was Andrew who pulled that fire alarm,'' Heather told her teacher.

``Well, we have to respond anyway,'' Thetford said. But as she directed her students outside, she thought, ``He's really going to be in trouble for ringing that bell.''

Seconds later, her students, lured outside by the phony alarm, started to fall in the path of bullets.

Mitchell and Andrew are charged with five counts of murder and 10 counts of battery. In Arkansas, those under age 14 cannot be tried as adults, no matter how heinous the crime, and the state Legislature cannot retroactively change the law. If found to be ``delinquent'' by the juvenile-court judge, they can be held only until their 18th birthdays; then they are automatically set free. They could, under Arkansas law, walk to the nearest pawnshop or firearm store and buy a gun.

Excuses from the families of both boys have only angered people here. Friends and relatives of the boys say neither could have done this on his own, but people around Jonesboro say that does not make sense.

Common sense tells them that one boy did not force another boy to become a killer. Most children, they theorize, would have told their mothers or fathers if a friend had wanted them to murder their schoolmates.

Investigators found 22 spent shell casings in the copse of trees where the boys are believed to have ambushed the other children. Five casings were from a 30.06 rifle, which the police took from Mitchell. Fifteen were from a .30-caliber rifle they took from Andrew.

``It's just too sad to understand,'' said Pat Whitlock, who runs Whitlock's Country Music Store on Linwood Drive in nearby Paragould. Musicians and music lovers gather here on Thursday nights to pick and sing and talk, and lately the talk has been about the killings.

``I don't think we'll ever really know why,'' Whitlock said.

That has become almost the anthem of people here.

Everybody wants an answer, but few people believe they will ever get one that satisfies them.

``Maybe,'' Whitlock said, ``they just needed attention.''

They have it now.

Every day several pieces of mail addressed to the boys are intercepted by the sheriff's department, which turns the letters over to the boys' lawyers and parents. Some of them are hate mail, including death threats, said Dale Haas, the Craighead County sheriff.

Mitchell, in turn, wrote a letter that his father read aloud on television.

He wrote, ``My thoughts and prayers are with the people who were killed, or shot, and their families.'' He went on, ``I really want people to know the real Mitchell someday.''

Relatives, visiting the boys in detention, have said they sob and appear dehydrated and not well. ``He ain't holding up real good,'' said Doug Golden, Andrew's grandfather.

But a worker at the detention center who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the boys were well fed, and that they watched cartoons on television and ``never cry or show emotion except when they are with their families or lawyers.''